MUSIC ARCHITECTURE

VR Exhibition – Installation 

Visualising the Voice of Maria Callas

A Greek National Opera (GNO) partnership with the Digital Media Lab (DmLab) of the Technical University of Crete. The event forms part of the Greek National Opera’s tribute programme marking the centennial anniversary of Maria Callas’ birth. It is also part of the 2023 UNESCO Maria Callas Anniversary proposed by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. The VR exhibition follows an intensive educational workshop that took place between 1-7 December 2023 at the Greek National Opera, Athens, Greece.

 As part of the ongoing collaboration between the Greek National Opera and the Digital Media Lab – Technical University of Crete, a pioneering educational workshop titled Visualising the Voice of Maria Callas was jointly organized by the two institutions. On the occasion of the celebrations marking 100 years since the birth of Maria Callas this workshop focused on further broadening the relationships between architecture and music, space and sound, and –through the use of new digital media– sought to experimentally visualize the very sound of the greatest soprano.

More specifically, the aim of this workshop was to offer participants the opportunity to understand the use of creative new media tools. Participants experimented with the three-dimensional models (3D point clouds) of the scanned interior spaces of the GNO building designed by Renzo Piano that resulted from the preceding research project by DmLab, and sought ways of capturing interactions between the voice of Maria Callas and the spaces of the Greek National Opera. This lead to the creation of virtual installations that, taken as a whole, illuminate this iconic figure from an entirely different perspective. The software used was TouchDesigner by Derivative.

 The first VR exhibition has opened inside the foyer of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, one of the best contemporary opera houses in Europe, on December 7, 2023, and the second one will open in Chania in Spring 2024.

 Participants:

Evangelos Aslanidis
Antonis Dimitropoulos
Elena Dimopoulou
Valentina Farantouri
Giorgos Gkanidis
Vasiliki Karathanasi
Marilena Kouvidi
Alexandra Niaka
Dimitra Patsioti
Constantinos Stratoudakis

Educational Workshop Scientific Committee:

Professor Panos Parthenios
Assistant Professor Anna Karagianni
Assistant Professor Vassiliki Geropanta
Professor Dimitris Andreadakis

Main Tutor:

Georgios Cherouvim [Senior FX-TD | Computer Animator | Artist | Educator]

Keynote Lecturers:

Marcos Novak [Director transLAB | Professor and Chair MAT/UCSB | Transarchitect | Artist | Theorist]
Ioannis Markopoulos [Head EU & International Business Nova]
John Bardakos [artist | researcher | adacemic]

Lecturers:

Alex Retsis [Sound Designer & Composer | Lecturer | Electronic Music Artist]
Stavros Kalimeris [Technical Design Office Collaborator at the Greek National Opera]
Sophia Kompotiati [Associate Musicologist | Head of GNO Virtual Educational Museum]
Nicoleta Chatzopoulou [composer | performer | researcher | artistic director NGallery] 
Panos Parthenios [Professor of Digital Technologies in Architectural Design]
Anna Karagianni [Assistant Professor of Architectural Design]
Vassiliki Geropanta [Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and New Technologies]

Project Lead:

Panos Parthenios
Professor of Digital Technologies in Architectural Design
Head of the Digital Media Lab – DmLab | School of Architecture | Technical University of Crete

Lead Donor of the GNO & Maria Callas Tribute Donor

Maria Callas Tribute Sponsor

The equipment is provided courtesy of

Credits: https://w.lnk.to/ladivina   https://www.maria-callas.com/   http://www.cobaltmusic.gr/